Fairhaven Pushes for City Status
Citizens rally to establish a formal municipal government to manage growth, improve infrastructure, and address the presence of transients.
Elsewhere in these columns will be seen the call of the county commissioners for a special session of the board to consider the matter of incorporating the city of Fairhaven. Attached to it is a petition signed by a very large number of citizens asking that the board take the steps necessary to establish a city government. Of course, incorporation is peremptorily necessary for the proper government of the city and for purposes of improvement in the matter of grading streets and doing all else needful in the establishment of the municipality which will benefit the entire citizenship. Other towns on the Sound have been taking the tramps and hobos to the wharves and shipping them away, and many of them have turned up in this city. Being without a municipal government, the city must depend upon the county sheriff for protection from these undesirable characters, and as that official does not seem to be giving the matter the interest and full attention which the situation demands, the people are rapidly losing patience and there is talk of an organized escort to attend the unpleasant gentry over the border.
“The people are rapidly losing patience and there is talk of an organized escort to attend the unpleasant gentry over the border.”
This 1890 push for incorporation highlights the tension between rapid development and the lack of civic infrastructure. The 'organized escort' of transients is a dark mirror to modern, ongoing debates about how municipal resources and policing are deployed to handle unhoused populations in Bellingham.
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